Wales Prepares to Go it Alone on Taxes for the First Time in 800 Years

The Welsh Assembly is making its poor members read a 220-page document all about property tax, as Welsh authorities push ahead with a plan to ditch stamp duty on property sales and replace it with a new tax. A tax that'll stay in Wales and become part of their budget to do with as they please.

It's quite the momentous bit of devolution, as it's 800 years since Wales had powers to take its own taxes. The new land transaction tax should take around £250m a year, if it gets officially stamped into law. The plan is to have it enshrined into law in early 2017, so by the beginning of the 2018 tax year Wales will have its own bespoke house-selling tax.

Rates and bands are yet to be announced, as that sort of thing's hard and will generate an awful lot of moaning, so is best left until it's too late to argue with.

Wales' finance secretary Mark Drakeford said: "This is a tax which affects so many of us. By replacing stamp duty land tax with a new made-in-Wales land transaction tax, public services in Wales will continue to benefit from the revenues raised by this important tax." [BBC]